Harvey Picker, 92, Pioneer in Patient-Centered Care, Is Dead

Saturday

Mar 29, 2008 at 5:37 AM

Mr. Picker, who led the Picker X-Ray Company, also started a foundation now considered a leader in promoting patient-friendly medical care.

Harvey Picker, the former president and chairman of a major X-ray equipment maker whose wife’s illness inspired him to start a foundation that is considered a leader in promoting patient-friendly medical care, died on March 22 at his home in Camden, Me. He was 92.

His death was confirmed by Christine Beshar, a spokeswoman for the family.

Mr. Picker led the Picker X-Ray Company from 1946 to 1971. Along with Westinghouse and General Electric, Picker X-Ray was one of the three largest X-ray manufacturers in the country. The company, based in Cleveland, was founded by Mr. Picker’s father, James, in 1914. It was acquired by General Electric Company Ltd. of England in 1981.

In 1986, after witnessing the care that his wife, Jean, was receiving for an incurable infection of the head and neck, Mr. Picker created the Picker Institute. A nonprofit organization, with headquarters in Boston, it conducts research on how the medical community can improve the experience of patients, beyond meeting their specific health needs.

The institute has been credited with coining the phrase "patient-centered care.” Its Picker Surveys, which systematically collect data from patients on how they view their hospital care, are now widely used in the United States and Europe. The institute has offices in Germany, Switzerland and England.

A 2006 article about Mr. Picker in The Times of London called him the father of modern patient care and said the patient-centered approach had become central to Britain’s national health care program.

“If you’d told me when we started that we would influence health care in leading countries in such a way,” Mr. Picker said in an interview for the article, “it would have been beyond what I’d ever imagined.”

Harvey Picker was born in Manhattan on Dec. 8, 1915. His mother, Evelyn Feil Picker, was a schoolteacher. Mr. Picker is survived by two daughters, Gale Picker of Seattle and Bobbi Hamill of Newton, Mass.; and three grandchildren. His wife of 43 years, Jean Sovatkin Picker, who in the 1960s was a United States delegate to the United Nations, died in 1990.

Mr. Picker graduated from Colgate in 1936 and received a master’s degree from the Harvard Business School in 1938. He then went to work at Picker X-Ray.

During World War II, in collaboration with the Army, the company developed X-ray equipment small enough to fit into three-foot lockers and sturdy enough to be dropped by parachute into battle zones.

The device’s ability to develop X-rays in a minute was credited with helping save many lives.

In the years after the war, with Mr. Picker as its president, Picker X-Ray was a leader among companies that advanced cobalt therapy for cancer, nuclear imaging diagnostics and the use of ultrasound for medical imaging. It also designed X-ray equipment for use in operating rooms that reduced the risk of explosive ignition of ether.

Mr. Picker retired from the company in 1971 and returned to Colgate, his alma mater, as an adjunct professor, teaching courses in the links between science and public policy. A year later, Columbia University appointed him dean of its School of International and Public Affairs, even though he did not have a degree or professional experience in foreign relations.

Commenting on the unusual appointment, William J. McGill, the university’s president at the time, told The New York Times that Mr. Picker was a pragmatic man with a keen sense of organization. “One of the good things about Columbia,” Dr. McGill said, “is that when talent shows itself, a plumber’s license is not of fundamental significance.”

Mr. Picker was an avid sailor. In 1937, while studying at Oxford University in England (he did not receive a degree), Mr. Picker was one of two American students who were cited for heroism after they rescued a young woman whose canoe had capsized in the River Cherwell.

When Mr. Picker moved to Maine in 1982, he bought the Wayfarer Marine Corporation, in Camden, one of the largest boatyards on the East Coast.

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